Chimes at Midnight
by Codalion
Summary: Seven years after the Triumph of the Dark Lord, Lily Potter's life is turned upside down when an old friend saves her life and that of her six-year-old son: at the price of her freedom. AU.


**A/N**: Everybody knows the words -- they're not mine, they're JKR's, if they were mine I'd be getting cash from the bank just to roll in it, etc.

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**Chapter 1: Many Happy Returns**

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They found her and her son coming down the lonely Northumbrian road. They had already found all the others.

If Lily had stayed a little while longer on the moorland with Harry, they might never have found her at all. He was a quiet, inward boy already. He wouldn't have minded. But the wind had gusted over the moorland with alarming speed, over and through Lily Potter and Harry Potter; so she had frowned and said, "it's getting cold, we should go back," and then lightly, "people might start to worry," and then taken her six-year-old's hand and started the trek back to the settlement.

She'd heard nothing. She couldn't hear anything from here, not with the wind like it was. It would haunt her later to wonder if she could have listened for anything at all.

But she did not, and so when she came round the bend in the road, and the men in black robes came round from the passel of trees on the other side, she had very little time at all.

She had no time to think -- she had no time for anything, her wand was in her hand and she was already shoving Harry to run in the other direction while she screamed the beginnings of "_Expulso_ --" but one of the other wizards was faster. Her wand flew out of her hand. So she turned and ran, catching Harry's arm as she went. But a jet of red magic hit him and he stumbled and fell -- she screamed, tried to pick him up -- and then the stun spell hit her too and they both fell crumpled.

Later, after their processing, she would find out that it was only her drawing on the Death Eaters at all that had saved her and Harry. It was a Muggle settlement they'd presumed they were raiding and there was no need to arrest Muggles. It was only her production of her wand that changed their intentions to _Stupefy _from _Avada Kedavra_. But it was much, much later that she learned this.

***

James and Sirius were away. They were with a company of other loyalists who intended to attack a camp in Sussex. If James were here this wouldn't have happened. If James were here things would've gone differently. If James were here if James were here if James were here --

If James were here James would be dead, Lily knew.

***

They put a bag over her head and ripped Harry out of her arms, and stunned her when she struggled.

***

They gave her a cell and took away Harry, and when she screamed again it fell on deaf ears. When she struggled she was stunned again. They had to stun her many times, anytime someone came within touching distance and she bit and clawed in her futile efforts to get free and find her son. Eventually they stunned her and knocked her unconscious to move her, lacking other viable options to silence her ragged repetition of _where is he, where is he, where is he_.

***

She woke up in a bed longer than she was tall, at its head a great window.

The light here was grey, like it had been one too many times through the wash. It was more light than she'd seen since she'd been taken away from the Northumbrian road. Her joints and limbs hurt to move -- courtesy, the memory came slowly, of countless Stuns and Disarms, and the kicks and blows with clubs that resulted when her captors or escorts tired of spellcasting. Her eyes were maladjusted to brightness, so she opened them just a crack, enough to discern that there was light at all. Then she closed them again. The strangest thing was not that she was in a bed, for at least one of her holding cells had had a bed: it was that she was in a room.

Lily stretched out her fingers and toes. Her shoes were off, that was new. Otherwise from the sweat and faint stickiness and over-hot feeling, her clothes hadn't been changed. There was grime under her clothing that hugged her skin. She felt dirty. She felt sick, too: she felt like she hadn't eaten in a while, and she was probably right.

It was hard to reckon time when she'd been in and out of pitch-black cells. When she'd been outside it had been blindfolded into darkness. For the past several -- days? -- there'd been no signposts for her circadian rhythms to direct themselves by. It had to have been days; there had been at least two Portkeys, she knew from the unmistakeable sickening disorientation. And at least one of them, the second, she'd heard a child cry out -- Harry, Harry had made the jump with her. At least there was that. At least there was that.

But Harry wasn't here, and neither was anyone else. She didn't understand.

Lily opened her eyes. This time she held out defiant against the thin grey light, until she'd adjusted, and endeavored to sit up. It was painful; she felt like a creaky old machine; but she managed, pulling herself up to lean against the oak headboard in her too-big grey jumper. She was thinner than she'd once been. Years of hiding rations did that to a woman. Most of hers had gone to Harry. The fabric hung off her wrists.

She was in a room. A bedroom, it looked like -- vanity, chest of drawers, bookshelf. Window behind her head, curtains drawn. It had been nice once, perhaps even grand, but it had fallen into disuse: the fixtures were distinctly 1950, there was dust everywhere. She looked at her hands and wrists again for any signs of restraints: none.

Lily swung her legs off the bed and the quilt came with it. It was a shabby quilt, very unlike the rest of the room. They didn't seem to go together. She left it on the floor as she made a few ginger steps.

No traps or wards or charms greeted her; she went over to the window and drew the curtain back. It was a cloudy, overcast day here. Where was "here?" God only knew. A lonely city street somewhere, as grey as everything else, the blank brick wall of some other building across the way.

Maybe the window opened. She pulled at it carefully -- wary, again, of consequences -- but none came, and neither did the window open, so she left it alone for now.

She went over to the door, barefoot. This she tried with less hope: and was surprised to discover that the doorknob turned, the door opened inward, and she stepped out over the threshold into a dark hardwood hallway without so much as tripping an alarm.

Lily wasted no time on the other doors. It was an upstairs hallway in a house, that much was obvious, and it wasn't worth waking any possible sleepers to see what the other rooms contained. Not yet, anyway. Now was the time to see, if she was in fact upstairs, if the stairs led down, and if down led to out. She didn't have any time to ask why yet. It was dead silent in the whole house, and that worried her enough. She didn't have the time to worry about that, either. And so she tiptoed down the hallway to one end: discovered that end was just a bend, went to the other, found the stairs without trouble -- tried one of the steps, then another.

They creaked. The house was quiet. She waited, listening, but there was no answer. So she tried another step down, and then another. These were quieter. With one hesitant hand on the dusty bannister she crept all the way down, past a landing, descending into a darker, windowless portion of the house decorated by portraits she hadn't the time to examine. Only out was on her mind.

She crept across the floorboards, coating the soles of her feet in dust. She crept all the way into a new, lit room, with a fireplace -- and a chair in front of the fireplace, and a man sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace.

Lily froze in the doorway.

The man stirred, barely: turned his head to look at her. "I see you're awake now," he said. "I thought it would take you longer, with the shape they brought you in."

Whatever she had expected to find, it wasn't this. Whatever she had expected to find, it had been -- Death Eaters, some kind of horrific magical guardian -- even just a regular old thug. Or what she had hoped to find, Kingsley, Remus, one of those not accounted for, alive and running a safe house somewhere, having seen her and picked her up. She'd expected that more than this. She'd expected that more than she'd expected --

-- the ghost of Severus Snape, who had died in her life when he was seventeen, and lain still in that grave for ten years.

But of course, he had not really died. He had taken the Death Eater's mark. And this was not really his ghost: this was him, at the age of twenty-seven, dressed in black and sitting in a dowdy old chair by a fireplace. He was better-dressed than she'd ever seen him, Lily thought, nonsensically. And his hair was at an even length. That was something.

Lily stared. Severus stared back at her.

He opened his mouth to say something, but took a while of it; a while she might have interrupted him, or bolted for the door. She did neither.

Severus picked up something from his lap -- a book -- and bookmarked it with a red ribbon worked into the binding as she watched, and then folded it shut with care and set it aside on the end-table next to him. Then he said, "I'll say this now as you're no doubt wondering. You're not a prisoner of the government any more. You've been exonerated of all suspicions of treason. Legally speaking," he glanced up at her again, with that black-eyed stare that sent through her a cold breath of memory, "you're free to go."

She said nothing to him.

"I found you and your son yesterday. I brought you here."

Was this real? she wondered, and how could she not? It had been ten years. And many, many more years of things happening. He had taken the Dark Mark. He had been as good as dead.

He cleared his throat, crisply, and stood up. She took a step back from the doorway. He was much taller than her now, though that had not been true when she'd left him.

"I'm not going to harm you," he said, though he didn't sound offended: just chilly. Chilly, and direct, and impassive, and hardly reminiscent of himself. "Though I can't imagine you're reassured. Consider this." Severus nodded upstairs. "Your son is elsewhere in this house. I haven't harmed him."

Harry? Was he lying? It was strange enough to hear words spoken in Severus's voice, she thought, distantly. She knew better than to be relieved.

"I give you my word, Mrs. Potter," and he took a step towards her and met her eyes again, tall and expressionless, "that I have no ill intent toward you or your son."

The room was darkened but for the fireplace and a single lamp in one of the corners. She ought to run from him, she knew. Perhaps there was another way out of the house, or perhaps she could find a weapon, or her wand, while she was hoping. He had taken the Dark Mark. He was one of them. Nothing could be trusted about him. Nothing about him resembled what he'd been. Anything he said was a lie. Years of hiding and seeing the Death Eaters raze the English countryside when they found something they disliked, or something they didn't want, had told her that much. She'd heard the stories. James, she thought, clutching his name to her like some kind of charm of protection, James had told her everything: James had told her about Lucius Malfoy and how the Dark Mark had changed him from a braggart and a bully to a man who killed in cold blood, and did worse in hot blood. That was what Severus too had become -- what James had urged her to accept, what Alice had urged her to accept before they took Alice too.

They were a few steps apart now. She was still barefoot; he was wearing black shoes that had been shined, and formal black trousers and a waistcoat under his black robes. Ten years had not been kind to him -- there were dark circles under his eyes, and lines. He stared at her. He didn't smile.

"Tell me," she said, slow, "where you've taken Harry."

Severus inclined his head upstairs. "One of the other bedrooms. He's sleeping."

Lily turned and bolted without a word.

"He's _sleeping_," Severus emphasized, but heaved what had to be a sigh as he followed her at a slower pace.

She rushed upstairs with a great deal of creaking in her wake and went door by door through the upstairs rooms. The first was locked. The second was a bathroom. The third was neither locked nor a bathroom, and was in fact a bedroom -- a darkened bedroom (Severus had drawn the curtains all the way shut and cast a further spell of some kind, Lily could tell) where a child slept bundled up in the bed. Instinctively or by habit, she tiptoed from there, taking quiet steps to the child's side to look at him. Severus had caught her up by this point and stood shadowed in the doorway, saying nothing.

It was Harry. She touched his hair, watched the soft rise and fall of his breathing, put a hand to his forehead to check his temperature: he didn't stir.

It was like all her strings had been cut. The tension that had been stringing her painfully upright for days all went out of her at once, like a sigh, and she felt very tired. She ran her hand through Harry's hair again; her thumb lingered on his cheek for a moment.

She turned to face Severus, who was illuminated in the doorway. He was back to expressionlessness.

"Where are we?" she asked.

He stepped aside as she walked past him out of the bedroom. She felt a thrum of tension as she passed him, but he said nothing and merely closed the door when she was out, latching it with a click. "London," he said.

"Where?"

"Not far from Diagon." That sounded like as much information as he was prepared to give at the moment. "This is larger than my mother's house on Spinner's End. I thought it more suitable for you and your child for that reason." _My mother's house_ coming from Severus was not a surprise, thought Lily with another shiver of memory. But such things were unimportant to think about. He was a Death Eater. "If you need to bathe, the toilet's one door down -- as I see you've discovered -- and there's clean clothing in your bedroom."

"I'm fine," said Lily, though the prospect had its allure -- she was a prisoner, she reminded herself, and now was no time for luxuries. "Give me my wand."

"No." Severus was never one to mince words.

Lily glittered a little with what she hoped was a revelation: "So you have it," she pressed. "Where is it?"

Severus ignored her this time. "You'll be hungry from your journey," he said, though twisted his mouth a little at _journey_, and she supposed he was appreciating the irony as well. "If it wouldn't trouble you to come downstairs, Mrs. Potter," again her married name, but he said it without rancor or any sign at all that he found this unusual, "I'll prepare some food for you. And for your son, once he wakes up."

At once Lily was overcome with what she'd been holding back in reluctance and disbelief: relief, sheer relief. She was alive. Harry was alive. And they were safe, after a fashion -- they were safe and in London. There were no guards stationed at the exits. There were no bars on the windows. Lucius Malfoy did not seem likely to stride in at any point in search of them both. She could see the sun and she had a room to herself, and a lavatory with a tub, and food was on its way. But they were unquestionably prisoners. Even Severus Snape had made no gestures to the contrary:_ legally speaking_, he'd said of their theoretical freedom.

There were prisons for prisoners like her, where they'd taken Alice and Frank when Alice and Frank were caught. God only knew what they'd have done with Harry -- but no, she was sick a little, she knew. There but for the grace of Severus went they. And what Severus's motives were, she could only guess.

Sentiment, she imagined. Leftover sentiment. Nothing, really, prevented a monster from retaining sentiment.

It would be foolish of her to endanger that.

"Of course," she said, cool and quiet. "Mr. --"

"Professor," said Severus after a moment. "Professor Snape, Mrs. Potter."

"Of course, Professor," said Lily and nodded for him to precede her down the stairs. And after a moment he did, and the cold house was silent around them save for the creaks and groans of the floorboards under their feet.


End file.
